


Boo!

by earlgreytea68



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Halloween, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 15:00:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12584444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: "Man fined for pretending to be a ghost in a Portsmouth cemetery" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/07/man-fined-pretending-to-be-ghost-portsmouth-cemetery-anthony-stallard





	Boo!

**Author's Note:**

> This is...the silliest little thing. But I couldn't get that news story out of my head.

“I’m sorry, what?” said Arthur. 

“You heard me,” barked out Sergeant Cobb. “There’s reports of a ghost in the graveyard. You should go check it out.” 

“But…why?” 

“Because it’s your _job_ ,” said Sergeant Cobb. 

“I’m a police officer,” Arthur pointed out. “Not a paranormal investigator.” 

Sergeant Cobb rolled his eyes. “It’s obviously not a real ghost. It’s just someone pretending to be a ghost.” 

Arthur considered this. “But it’s March.” 

“So?” 

“Why would anyone pretend to be a ghost in March?” 

“Can you just go to the graveyard and check it out, please?” demanded Sergeant Cobb, exasperated. 

***

Arthur went to the graveyard. He wasn’t happy about it. He had become a cop because he wanted to help people, not wander around in graveyards catching kids playing pranks. Well. He supposed this _was_ helping people, since apparently these pranks were scaring people, but, what the fuck, they were just some fake ghost noises, people were overreacting. 

The graveyard was on a little hill and had an overabundance of monuments from the town’s shipbuilding glory days. That meant it gave kids playing pranks on people plenty of cover. 

Arthur stood just inside the main entrance and looked out over the expanse of gravestones and tried to determine what the fuck Sergeant Cobb expected him to do. 

“Hello?” he called finally. “Any ghosts in here?” 

The graveyard was silent. 

“Fuck this,” Arthur said, and went home. 

***

“We’re still getting reports about a ghost in the graveyard,” Sergeant Cobb said to Arthur. “I thought you were checking that out.” 

“I did,” Arthur said. “I didn’t see any ghosts.”

“It’s not going to be a ghost. It’s going to be a person,” said Sergeant Cobb in exasperation. 

“I didn’t see any people, either,” Arthur retorted. 

“Well, go and look again,” commanded Sergeant Cobb. 

***

This time when Arthur went back to the graveyard he at least walked up and down a few rows of gravestones. He still had no idea what he was meant to be investigating, though, so after a little while he gave up and left. 

***

“We are going to need to make the graveyard a regular part of your patrol,” Sergeant Cobb said. “The ghost reports just will not stop. We need to strike fear into the hearts of those teenage vagrants.” 

“Whatever,” Arthur said under his breath. 

***

As spring rolled into summer, Arthur kept dropping by the graveyard and kept seeing nothing interesting. 

“You know,” he said to the gravestones, “if there really is a ghost here, you could at least come out and make it interesting.” 

Nothing happened. Nothing ever happened in the graveyard. 

Christ, this job was boring. 

***

Arthur decided that, if Sergeant Cobb was going to keep bothering him about not having stopped the ghost reports, then he might as well take them seriously. He started interviewing the people making the reports. There wasn’t much of a pattern timewise, but every time the ghost report happened, it was basically eerie noises coming from behind a gravestone. 

“Eerie noises?” said Arthur to the witnesses. “You heard eerie noises and assumed it was a ghost?”

And they all said something like, _It’s a graveyard. Graveyards are spooky._

Arthur went back to the graveyard and shouted out over the gravestones. “Whoever’s out there making eerie noises, please stop it! I don’t feel like having to hang out in this graveyard all the time!” 

There was no response except from a little old lady walking her dog nearby who gave him a suspicious look. 

“You’re not pretending to be a ghost in here, are you?” Arthur asked her. 

She reported him to Sergeant Cobb for harassment. 

***

Throughout the summer, reports of a ghost in the graveyard persisted. Arthur, still on the trail, started doing stakeouts. He felt ridiculous, but he spent a lot of time in the graveyard, on the lookout for anything suspicious. He never saw anything, but he did learn a lot about the history of the town and its people. He began to feel a kinship with the gravestones, with the worn and weathered ones that could no longer be read but still embodied a centuries-old love, and with the newer shiny ones that sometimes seemed as forgotten as the old ones. When he walked along the graveyard, he would greet Verity and Martha and Mabel and Josiah and William and John and Elizabeth and Kitty and Victoria and David and Arthur and Howard. He traced their family relationships, generations of births and marriages and deaths. 

Really, the graveyard was a nice place. He never heard any eerie noises. 

***

“Obviously,” said Sergeant Cobb in September, “the ghost reports are only going to get worse as we get closer to Halloween.” 

Arthur sighed and stepped up his patrols. Soon he was spending large parts of every day in the graveyard. He talked to all the gravestones, and it was kind of peaceful. 

Ghost reports ground to a halt. Sergeant Cobb was impressed. 

Arthur wanted to point out that all he did was spend all his time hanging out in a graveyard, but…he liked it. He kind of didn’t want to be taken off that assignment. Maybe…Maybe he was in the wrong career. Maybe he _didn’t_ want to be a cop, given how happy he’d been wandering around in a graveyard all day. 

Of course, Arthur had no idea what career was conducive to hanging around in a graveyard all day. 

He asked _Betsy Cadbill, Beloved Daughter, 1832-1857_. “Any ideas for good, unstructured careers? Not stuck behind a desk all the time?” 

Betsy Cadbill apparently had no ideas, because she stayed silent. 

***

“What are your plans for Halloween?” Sergeant Cobb asked, and for one wild moment Arthur thought he was about to get invited to a Halloween party and needed to come up with a costume. 

“I don’t know,” he stammered. “Nothing. Why?” 

“Your plans are camping out in the graveyard making sure no ghost shows up. And making sure no vandals show up, either. You know how Halloween is in a graveyard.” 

Arthur sighed. 

***

Halloween was a brisk, clear night, and Arthur brought blankets and a Thermos of spiked coffee and a good ebook on his phone. Actually, he thought, there were worse ways of spending Halloween. He wrapped himself up with his back propped against the Schuyler family monument (four generations, shipping empire naturally) and settled in. 

And he was there for maybe an hour, and the book was just getting good, when he heard them: what could only be described as “eerie noises.”

Arthur put his phone down and listened. Dramatically ghostly moans. Drifting toward him on the slight breeze that was tumbling crisp leaves his way. 

Arthur frowned. Really, he had been having such a lovely night, and now he had to go deal with a fucking fake ghost. He kept his blanket draped around his shoulders and followed the sounds of the moans until he was in the basic vicinity of where they were coming from. 

“You know,” he called, “I know you’re not a real ghost. I know you’re just the asshole who’s been frightening people around here for months.” 

There was a pause, during where there were no eerie noises, and then a guy’s head popped up over one of the monuments. 

“Boo!” he said enthusiastically. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Seriously? What the fuck?” 

“What?” asked the man innocently. 

“Why are you in a graveyard pretending to be a ghost?”

“Because you’re here looking for a ghost,” he replied, in a British accent that was appealing. His face was half in shadows but Arthur had the impression it was appealing as well, and that was annoying. 

Arthur folded his arms to better broadcast his disapproval. “Tonight I am. What have you been doing all the other times you’ve been pretending to be a ghost?” 

“Well. At first I was just bored. And then I realized it was the only way to keep you coming back to the graveyard.” 

“At first you were just _bored_?”

“Darling, you’re completely missing the very important second point.” 

“Dar… I… What?” asked Arthur, flustered. 

The man smiled silkily at him, a smile Arthur felt even from the other side of the gravestone. Then he stepped out from behind the gravestone. “Hello,” he said, and held out his hand. “I’m Eames.” 

“I’m… Okay,” Arthur said, unsure what else to say. 

The man kept smiling. He said, “ _You_. You seem like a man who might need to run away with a ghost. What do you think?” 

“I think… I think… You’re not a ghost.” 

Eames smiled. “No, I’m very real. Very much a man. I can prove it to you a bit later. But first...” Eames cocked an eyebrow. 

“First?” Arthur said. 

“Time for a getaway?” suggested Eames. 

And that…should have sounded absurd. It really should have. 

As absurd as the fact that Arthur answered with, “Boo.” 

Eames grinned.


End file.
